Arranging small chamber works for orchestral forces
is too often an exercise in fatuous inflation. Which is to say, I did not
approach a recording of these two 'altered' works with much enthusiasm. I gave
it a chance because of the musicians involved—Bashmet owns the viola
sonata. I am very glad I did. (The arrangements were done by other
musician/composers—the viola transcription in 1991, the violin in 2005.)

What these arrangements do, rather than inflate or
(over) enrich the original pieces which is often what happens in cases such as
this (at least one of Shostakovich's string quartets has been orchestrated), is
intensify them. The violin and viola still dominate their respective works. But
Kremer's large string orchestra (13 violins, 5 violas, 4 cellos, 2 monumental
double basses, and percussion on the violin sonata) mainly increases the dynamic
scale of the pieces, while the lower strings add a whole new foundational
dimension, which in the violin sonata especially is nearly overwhelming in its
power.

Some may well object that changing the scale of
these pieces just flat changes them into something else. The greatest change
brought about here is probably the removal of the contrasting voice of the
piano: there is much to be said for the spareness of the contrast achieved by
the alto stringed instrument alongside the piano in the more elegiac viola
sonata. In this form, the piece is lonelier, the viola nobler. Bashmet's
version of the original version (with Sviatislav Richter on Olympia, OCD 625,
recorded in 1985, issued on CD in 1997) makes a very powerful case for it.

I can go either way happily on this, but agree with
album commentator David Fanning that these particular sonatas do seem, once
heard in their orchestrated versions (these are concertos not chamber
symphonies), to be latent concertos. The original violin sonata especially seems
almost to burst the seams of the smaller forces. Which do you prefer—Bach's Goldbergs on solo keyboard or as a string trio (transposed by Dymitry Sikovetsky)?
And don't laugh until you hear the Sikovetksy version. (Orfeo C 138-851A)

As orchestrated pieces, these two sonatas do sound
like true Shostakovich, thanks to both Kremer and Bashmet—something midway
between the quartets and symphonies in their overall musical effect. In a word,
they work and I heartily recommend the recording.

I come late to the Ben Johnston party, though I had
hints (from the Kronos and Stanford Quartets) that there might well be something
here to dwell on. That Johnston is now eighty years old seems shocking. But it
does seem that he is finally to get his due: this is the first release in a
series that will eventually give us all ten of his string quartets.

I am much taken by this music but reluctant to make
judgments at this point about its stature. It is still too new to me. So I will
simply transcribe my listening notes in the hope of appealing to your curiosity
and will save generalizations until I've heard more of his work.

String Quartet Number Nine (1988).
First movement: "Appalachian Waltz" by a source with the same musical roots but
a more abstract mind. A modal sound, which is likely the result of the
composer's use of just temperament, which unlike the equal temperament we
are accustomed to, results in different spacing between notes. The second
movement is more urgent and busy. In the third we are back to the roots sound
but now slower, more pastoral, almost hymn-like. In the final movement the tempo
is up again and we have something almost Eastern European but with a swing to
it. I see why the record producer led off with this piece.

String Quartet Number Three (1966).
I found I had nothing to say about this piece the first time through and so set
it aside for a couple of days. It felt like a sketch for something to be worked
out later. The music darts around as if trying things out. The second time
through I heard a wisp of a melody trying to find its way out. It turns into a
plaintive wandering for a couple of minutes and then the darting about is back.
This remains a quizzical work, which I will revisit. There is something
interesting going on here. The quartet is called "Verging," which is suggestive;
and it is sometimes coupled with Quartet Number 4 in concerts, which as
it turns out is even more suggestive, though the latter was not written until
seven years late.

String Quartet Number 4 (1973).
Back to roots, sort of. This is Johnston's transformation of "Amazing Grace"
into a theme and variations, which amounts to a complex universe with "Amazing
Grace" at its center. It is a wild ride off in many directions. The extremely
informative program notes tell us that three different tunings are used!

String Quartet Number 2 (1964).
Johnston's second quartet is the earliest piece on the CD. It feels a good deal
more like other modern composers' music, though this apparent relation can be
deceiving. Like Eliott Carter, for example, the music appears to be more about
defining a space than delivering a musical narrative. But there is considerably
more drama here than in anything I know of Carter's. We are aware of an
emotional core to the piece that is frequently missing from contemporary
modernism. We feel ourselves invited to infer a tale from its most intense
moments.

I am sure that just temperament has a good deal to
do with the appeal of this music. I sense it almost literally reading 'between
the notes' to get at something fundamental lying behind them. This is
foolishness, of course; but there is a strange and moving quality to this music
that needs to be addressed. Perhaps the next CD in the series will tell me
more.

Okay, all of you out there who have been hanging
back afraid you might get hooked into one or both of these continuing series if
you heard a sample of either, here's the Devil at BIS Records offering you one
of each for the price of a single CD. Both series have reached Volume 15, and so
Bis has decided it is time to do something special. I'm sure what's also at work
here is drawing more customers, a move entirely justified by the quality of the
music. This is the kind of worthy recording project that no major label would
undertake—and why many of them have become moribund. At the moment, the only
equally compelling ventures I know of are John Eliot Gardiner's Bach Cantata
cycle on his own label (!) and Koopman's comparable cycle, which was in danger
of dying out within sight of the finish line when Challenge Classics picked it
up.

C.P.E. Bach, Johann Sebastian's oldest and most
talented son, who, were his name anything other than Bach, would be recognized
for what he is: the composer who defines the music between baroque and
neoclassical. He writes music that is freer and more spacious (less closely
packed) than that of his baroque forebears, less straightforward and elegant
than that of his successors. It is full of wonderful surprising turns and
eccentricities. Once you've heard a few of his works, you can pick him out of a
crowd in an instant. His unique voice characterizes both his orchestral and solo
keyboard music. It has a eccentric and engaging spirit that has become essential
to my musical life and I urge it on you.

The projects before us, produced, directed, and led
by keyboard player Miklos Spanyi, moved from Hungary to Finland a release or so
ago, where it is now happily nourished by that country's rich and vibrant modern
musical culture. The chamber orchestra that Spanyi now leads is the Opus X
Ensemble. They are a marvel, as is Spanyi himself. The keyboard instrument he
plays in these concertos is an instrument that Spanyi has led the revival of,
the tangent piano: it marries the virtues of the harpsichord with the fortepiano
and magically seems to escape the shortcoming of each. It is vibrant, crisp, and
lyrical. Spanyi plays a clavichord for the solo pieces in this set. Coming to
the solo music from JS Bach's before him and Haydn's after, I find it winsomely
wayward and a bit melancholy. It plays very well on a cold, rainy October day in
New England.

This double album is a perfect entrance to these two
series and to C.P.E. Bach himself.

Bob Neill, in addition to
being an occasional equipment and regular music reviewer for Positive- Feedback
Online, is also proprietor of Amherst Audio in Amherst, Massachusetts, which
sells equipment from Audio Note, Blue Circle, Manley Labs, and JM Reynaud, among
others.